Russian leader Vladimir Putin has described the fall of the USSR as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.
After 1991 the US became the world's only superpower, with disastrous consequences, particularly in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book "The End of History", in which he declared that western liberal democracy and the free market had triumphed, has come to be seen by many as a symbol of an overconfident, complacent and hubristic attitude that led the west to its own set of failures and catastrophes in the years since.
Was Putin right?